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[numerobis]

Am I just a master farmer, or is feeding my dwarves a bit on the easy side?  Upon arriving, I gathered plants until I found seeds of all types, and I built a single 4x1 plot for each plant type both above and below ground.  In months that a plant can't grow, I just leave its field fallow.  Now, I have 100 dwarves, I haven't expanded my farms, and I *still* have a significant food surplus.  Basically, something like 10% of my population is enough to fish, butcher, grow, mill, process, brew, and cook more food than I can possibly use -- and the millers and processers are also spending a lot of their time making thread and dye, or being unemployed.  I have more glassworkers than foodworkers.

[BurnedToast]

Yes, food is very easy to get. You don't even need 10% of your population, 2 legendary growers is enough to feed 200 dwarves (even without abusing booze/seed cooking).

[kuro_suna]

for now its easy but im hoping that when military gets less dumb and possibly traps get nerfed food production optimization will be more important since the size of the military you can support will be proportional to your food surplus

[valcon]

i didn't even bother fishing or hunting, its too dangerous

i just had 1 max size outdoor plot and 1 max size indoor plot and cooked/brewed all the stuff i grew

when i scuttled the fort i had 160 dwarves and 2700 beer and 2300 prepared meals

pretty damn easy to get food

[Agdune]

Much as I hate to say it, food is a bit too easy. I have 5000 units of cooked food, 1000 plants and 1400 drinks from a 13x13-1 room filled with variously sized farms. This is while leaving it fallow half the year and *trying* to let them reduce the size of the pile before making more food.

Not only that, but it really makes me wonder what jobs I'm going to give the next wave of migrants, since I don't really use my millitary much...

[ January 10, 2008: Message edited by: Agdune ]

[Slappy Moose]

I wouldn't mind if food was harder to get, but the hard part is balance.

As of now, getting food when you first play is hard. Right now, I have a fort that has possibly 4 thousand extra food crap, and I have actually cut down the ENTIRE 3x3 map of wood, just to make enough barrels and coal, the only things I was using wood for (admittedly, lots of coal was being made). But I am still running our of barrels, and have at least 3 very very large (at least 20x20 in total, each) food stockpiles, all full.

However, I think that food should be easier to spoil, and be eaten by vermin. This would make cats much more useful, as well as making a bunch of food that lasts for years much much harder to do.

Although food in freezing climate should go bad slower.

I don't know, it would be hard to make food harder to get.

[Capntastic]

The game is still in early alpha.   Bickering about balance issues isn't very productive.   There will soon be a lot more factors involved with every aspect of the game.   Give it time; things'll sort out.

Or try living on a super haunted lava monster zone, in the open.

[Torak]

quote:Originally posted by Capntastic:
<STRONG>
Or try living on a super haunted lava monster zone, in the open.</STRONG>

Without walls, channels, or traps. Live in the open. I tried it once, I died in the first year due to skeletal muskox.

[Slappy Moose]

quote:Originally posted by Capntastic:
<STRONG>The game is still in early alpha.   Bickering about balance issues isn't very productive.   There will soon be a lot more factors involved with every aspect of the game.   Give it time; things'll sort out.

Or try living on a super haunted lava monster zone, in the open.</STRONG>

I think it is good that food is easy to get, rather than hard. If food became as hard to get as it currently is easy, the game might be near impossible.

[Captain Failmore]

Food is entirely too easy to produce. A five-by-five plot of anything is enough to support a whole fortress of over two hundred people, especially if you're producing plants that can be processed into multiple units of food and then cooked.

The problem is just how little each individual eats and drinks. I don't know what the total is right now, but it's something like two meals a month or less per person. Now, given how the game works and how time passes in the game, it would be highly unrealistic to expect every dwarf to eat daily, but we could assume that each of those meals is supposed to represent a month's worth or half a month's worth of food. As time goes on and agriculture is improved, the output of food and the level of consumption per dwarf should be changed to represent that.

The way I look at it, the first few years of your fortress's growth should revolve entirely around food production unless you strike it rich quick and can afford to trade for huge quantities of food. I know some people will disagree with that, and I think that since it's a game we can afford to bend reality a little bit, but seriously. People eat a lot. Dwarfs eat almost nothing. Unless they're photosynthesizing or running off batteries or something, they either need to eat and drink a lot more than they currently do, or if each meal and drink they take is supposed to represent consumption over a period of time, the output levels of plants need to be adjusted for that. In either case there's no way a fifteen-by-fifteen foot garden can support the food needs of two hundred people. Hell, that much should at most support your starting seven, and that's with no surplus at all.

Once soil fertility is in and once food outputs are adjusted, I think we'll find feeding our fortresses a bit more difficult. This is good. Once you have even a basic grasp on agriculture, feeding everyone in your fortress is child's play, and aside from outside aggressors, starvation and thirst are currently the only outstanding threats to the survival of a fortress. Establishing a working system of farms and food processing centers should be a big undertaking, not something you do once and forget about.

[Forumsdwarf]

That's great as long as dwarves don't have to eat more often.  They interrupt enough tasks as it is.

And it takes them way too long to take a drink.

[Whiskey Bob]

I agree that with the increased potential farm output (no more need to rely on that blasted river) there should be a tuning of food output.  Food shouldn't always be a major concern, but right now it's pretty much the only concern for a starting fortress and it's all too easily handled.

I'm thinking that the "break point" is the current plantx1->boozex5->foodx5 cycle that produces an incredible amount of food (incredibly compact food, I might add) and drink very fast.  It might be too severe but what if the output always equaled the input?  eg. one plump helmet = one unit of ale.  This would probably require stack splitting/recombining to work in a sensible fashion (you wouldn't want two hundred barrels all containing a single drink), but apparently that's already in the works.

[Skyrage]

Actually, I think that a good solution for the food overflow is this:

1: Dwarf booze should NOT be cook-able by itself or perhaps at all.

2: 1 barrel of booze requires 2 or more of a certain plant. In fact any extraction process should require a certain amount in order to get 1 unit of what you want instead of how it is now where little apparently gives more.

3: Same for cooking - reduce the output that you get here. It doesn't really make sense that you get 10x as much output from the input. As for quality of the meal that you produce, the higher the quality of a meal, the smaller the output you get. The input required can remain mostly the same. For a simple meal, 2 ingredients required and output is...say 5? Mediocre, 3 ingredients and output is 3 meals. Luxurious, 4 ingredients and 2 meals are resulted as output. Thus no more instant-best-meals-from-start gameplay, but it will rather be something that you really have to work for.

4: This would probably also make fertilizers a much more attractive option so that seeds that you plant give a much higher output.

[ January 11, 2008: Message edited by: Skyrage ]

[sphr]

hmmm perhaps we should consider this alternate way of looking at things : The map you're playing on could be too easy.  If there is no water and lack of sand/soil, I guess you may find it more challenging.  Or if there are other kinds of challenges and danger, maybe you'll appreciate that *at least* you don't have to worry about *food*  

at the current stage (and perhaps for the future as well?) DF is more like a toy than a game.  A game usually involves working towards some clear (no matter scripted or run-time generated) goals.  A toy on the other hand, depends entirely on the person playing with the toy.  We fabricate the rules and settings and styles of playing... and then we play... to no end... (until we get bored with the current rules and set up a new game with new rules).

So if you find food is too easy, why not start another set of "game rules" by finding challenging maps to challenge yourself?  Do share the challenging seeds too so that others can partake in the fun!

[Slappy Moose]

quote:Originally posted by sphr:
<STRONG>Jibber</STRONG>

Thats a great point actually. My current fort is in a good position, with lots of resources. Going to a barren land would make food much harder to get.

Most of us here have been thinking of this from a point of view where farming seeds are everywhere.

In a harsher climate, it may be harder to get.

Still, some food tweaking is needed. Especially the "luxurious" and "simple" meal stuff, as well as insane amounts of farm output.